Tuesday, January 23, 2018

CFAM curator Amy Galpin is leaving Orlando and we are very sad

In a blow to the local arts community, Amy Galpin announced today that she will leave the Cornell Fine Arts Museum and, following in LeBron's footsteps, take her talents to Miami. The curator of Rollins College's museum has been named chief curator at the Frost Art Museum, located at Miami's Florida International University, and plans to take up her new post by mid-February.

"I'm grateful to Ena Heller, the incredible team at CFAM, and Rollins College for all of the support. I'm proud of all of the original projects we've done together and the ways in which we've grown the collection," Galpin told us today.

"I'm particularly excited about the 19th-century American women artists and the work by contemporary artists such as Luis Camnitzer, Patrick Martinez, and Whitfield Lovell that were brought into the collection during my time at Rollins." The Dawoud Bey photograph above is one of her favorite acquisitions during her time at CFAM, she adds.

CFAM director Ena Heller says, "In her four years at Rollins, Amy Galpin has brought an ambitious and expert curatorial vision to our museum, and implemented it what looked like effortless precision. I am immensely thankful for her well-researched, elegantly curated exhibitions; her dedication for spotting young talent and offering them an exhibition platform; her lectures and tours that combined serious scholarship with humor and an obvious passion for teaching."

Heller adds, "We will miss her and wish her all the best in her next adventure." The museum is seeking a new curator, though Galpin says she will be contributing to some of her projects that are on the calendar in 2018.

Galpin leaves the museum on a high note with her just-opened show Ruptures and Remnants, a masterful mix of new acquisitions (like a pair of pieces from Oakland artist Sadie Barnett) with a wide range of items from the permanent collection. This exhibition shows off Galpin's strengths, like her trademark ability to draw lines between, say, a 19th-century French realist painter with a contemporary Miami videographer. The city will be poorer for her loss, but we look forward to seeing what new perspectives may come.